The plan was to escape Los Angeles, drive as far away as possible in one general direction, until the sun decided it time to end it all beyond the horizon. Amboy, California (selling point: the volcanic crater and 24 square miles of jagged lava field) became the tack on the map establishing base. From this point of desolation, the Mojave Desert would be high, and Route 66 would point away from the city.

Amboy, California. Once a popular roadside diner, motel and fueling station. Last weekend, however, the electricity had been shut off across town, killing the hope for gasoline and cold drinks.

National Trails Highway, or Route 66 paved over.

Amboy Crater. A deceptively tumultuous mile-long hike leads to the scarred base of the crater, where a flood of lava tore open the rim and created a footpath. As warned, the 24 miles of basalt is habitat to three of California’s most poisonous and aggressive snakes. If the Mojave Rattlesnake (also known as The Most Poisonous Snake in the State!) was not deterrent enough, the unforgiving desert land also teems with scorpions and tarantulas. All impressive dangers avoided, it’s here in this field where I am stung in the ear by a bee.

Middle of Nowhere. Not sure where this is, other than somewhere past Amboy on the way to Arizona. Driving this solitary landscape tends to throw the ability to gauge speed and distance.

Roadrunner Restaurant. About thirty miles west of Amboy, this forgotten restaurant haunts the side of the road, where legend has it the curse of the free-floating neon head stalks coyotes throughout the land. On moonless nights, they say you can hear a strange electric hum, a fluttering buzz reminiscent of ”beep, beep.”

Joshua Tree. On the way back to Los Angeles, a three-hour trek through this spectacular park yielded some great photos. The vastness of the land really doesn’t come across in point-and-shoot photography, so the abstract approach better captures the feel of the surroundings. Fun Fact: Sure the rocks and the trees are stunning, but their numbers pale in comparison to the abundance of red ants.

Joshua Tree/Barker Dam. An easy mile hike through flat desert and snug passages of rock walls opens to the still soggy basin floor of this impressive dam.

Going Out West. The open road has always symbolized freedom. Two lanes makes a vein through the old dusty land, ready to lead any untethered soul away from the world…or, in this case, to the start of first grade just a few days away.

Many changes abound with Wormwood: Season Two, aesthetics of presentation not excluded. The decision was made to adjust each instance of podcast art from the previously static image to weekly original work reflective of each episode.

Here are the three latest episode podcast designs I’ve created for Season Two so far.

Wormwood: Episode 2: The Rescue Download

With this episode taking place in Los Angeles, and with more of an elaborate introduction to our season’s big baddie, I took Dave Accampo’s logo template design (which will serve as the frame for all of Season Two’s podcast art) and incorporated the palm tree cut-out. Since so few episodes take place entirely out of Wormwood, this center image seemed a natural distinction to make in artwork. The other two primary elements added: the occult symbol and the cemetery were included in the final texture, because, as you’ll see, I tend to go for layeyed textures when all else fails. If only I could have found a way to include a bitchin’ moped…

Wormwood: Episode 4: Thinning Download

This being the first episode in a projected two-episode storyline of mine, I wanted to hint at where my plans would end up. Again, with the textured approach to layout, I think I ended up with a happy accident, and my favorite design of the new bunch. The thought process here is simply to take the human skull and present it faded, almost absent entirely. I did this by blending three layers together: 1) a set of dead, burned trees, 2) a sketch of an old house, and 3) a detailed medical illustration of a human skull. The final result of the faint skull within the background made my day. For the next episode in this storyline, I’ll probably work a variation of the diminishing skull.

Wormwood: Episode 5: A Sentimental Nature Download

I finally get to go weird. I struggled to write this episode, and the less I say about it here, the better. There’s not a chance of jotting down an effective summary. That said, I will tease that this somewhat stand-alone experimental episode features prominent chatter of a Norwegian Water Beast, an egg-laying parasitic host that — Ah. Never mind. I’ve offered enough insight to justify the use of tentacles. Again with the textures here, I attempted to allude to split surfaces, from water to land, each infused with a trace of microscopic organisms.

You can subscribe to the audio series through iTunes, or listen directly from the Official Wormwood site: www.wormwoodshow.com.

I’ve tried this before; the first time under the guise of a fictional creation I called Nick Edison. The interesting (or questionable) part of that project was that I used current situations in my real life as a launch pad into the horrific spectacle of a sick and hallucinatory made-up diary. It was the summer of 2002, and I hated my day job. As if that’s an excuse. Like many, I thought forced darkness beget literary praise, failing to understand that even a monkey on a typewriter could punch the keys and make somebody cringe. I started by cataloging the minutiae of my day at the office. Sure it was typical stuff, relatable, boring, crying out with the ambition of many an office temp. But I knew the depths I was aiming to sink to, and by the second entry, I began to veer ever-so-slightly away from the real world. I meant to destroy Nick Edison, one uncomfortable weekly installment after the next. I continued on that trajectory until I wrote myself into a corner with vile and senseless acts of a fictional man drinking himself to death in a hotel room.

But Nick Edison didn’t die. No, he got better and left town. Effectively, he disappeared.

The second time I decided I wanted a blog, my aim was scattershot, categorized as an undulating set of tentacles, and unfortunately attempted during  a time when I desperately needed to write, but not to air the words openly. I vented. That blog most certainly did die. Good-fucking-bye.

Now, I have this: adapted MONSTER.  

To explain the seed of inspiration, we’re gonna have to go all the way back to the Civil War… er, I mean, back to when I was twenty-one years old, sitting in a 24-hour dive with a .75 cent bottomless cup of god-awful coffee, writing (and re-writing) my second screenplay  by hand. Oddly enough, it was this seedy neon dive, a dirty black & white checkered hellhole overflowing with inebriated students and perpetually shit-faced university bums that provided the backdrop to the time in my life when I started to take my writing seriously. A cracked porcelain cup, a stack of lined paper, a lame jukebox, and a flood of other writers, all congregating a mere two blocks off campus, before, after, and sometimes during class… that was the scene.

What I was writing at the time, it was messy and wild, and it might have been the last time I was completely held in the clutches of unabashed creative enthusiasm. Nothing smeared on the page was pre-planned. The screenplay wasn’t something that needed the intellectual distance of marketing. Not then.  It was just for me, in the story, the characters, and especially in the writing of it. It was good.

Now, some years later, after some time spent jaded, and some time spent just past cynicism, I’m going back to the same story to spark the same mindset. That’s where this blog will live. It’s my agenda to get it there and to keep it there.

Faces blurred and distorted. They liquefied into something unnerving. Buildings and traffic blended into a miasma of textured smudge. The sun, vicious with haze and quivering reflections, pressed down on the city and streaked patterns of illuminated symbols of red and yellow and green. There were bodies everywhere. Cars horns rang out tone deaf. Brakes screeched above the hum of engines.

The scene was a dizzying chisel to the skull of man desperate to block out the world and pull focus on his horror in the masses. It was there, within it all, he kept seeing her.

Stathis Edison fumbled through the chaos of the day, blinded by the overload that worked to disorient him. Pale as a demented new sickness. His hands wet. His lungs jerked his tense body with the jab of every bottomed out breath. Behind him, a little apartment ruined with blood, a squad car with broken windows and two broken necks, a tinny voice unanswered over the radio. Against each of his hurried steps the weight of the stolen, standard issue pistol swung heavy in the deep pocket of his trenchcoat. His knuckles bled glass. The ruined bones of his left hand swelled his fingers around a platinum band.

Pain could not distract Stathis Edison. Not any longer.

A noise beat into his head. An assault. A rape penetrated minuscule cracks in his skull, shot around the interior cavity like a rusted ball bearing… there was a man at the store… and always a woman there, too… and like clockwork, there were children on the sidewalk outside, little brats who mocked him… the neighborhood made him weak and sick just so it could bloom… for thirty years… for thirty years… thirty years it seethed… thirty years in a world of constant strangers, and strange laughter, and hurtful whispers.

Background noise swished brain matter into incomprehensible sludge. He cried. He panicked. He vomited without losing momentum, even when he lost coordination.

He saw her. Again. At the red light. His wife.

The heat swirled activity into something busy and random. Sweat sizzled on wet bodies that meshed together into an orgy. He sidestepped into the street. His drenched feet slipped inside his shoes. He darted left and right, into any opening wide enough for fast steps. His shoulders arched backward with every figure battered. He bled and stumbled. He grunted.

He tripped. His knee crashed into the split sidewalk. Busted within the joint. Spitting out a blunt cry, he rolled to his side and clutched his bent leg in interlocked, bloodied and swollen fingers. He sobbed. There were cracked bones in his left wrist. There was blood that darkened his hairline above his ears. There was sweat that stung inflamed scratches across his forehead. His wet clothes tangled and stunk with anguish.

This is Stathis Edison, curled up in the broad daylight of the busy street. The sudden realization of reality hit him harder than any of his throbbing injuries. It flashed through his mind at once how far he had fallen with a cacophonous ache of remembrances and cries. Into an echo, everything else fell silent. He retreated into his rambling mind, into the tragedy of his actions. Nothing could ever matter to him again, not after what he had done.

With the sound of sirens faint through his awareness, he watched the faces glance with pity and repulsion. What madness accomplished through him, what horror left on the world through his hands and his teeth… it was humiliating.

Then he saw her again. Turned to the crowds of the sidewalk. And gone. He pulled himself to his feet. He stumbled and shouted. Of course, he cried.

He limped. He used buildings and people to carry forward, but was never fast enough to keep up, never sure-footed enough to maintain direction. “My wife,” he screamed with a broken heart. He shoved people out of his way, women and children. “My wife. My wife!”

She appeared, a fleeting glimpse. Spurring him once more. It was enough. Her delicate skin revealed as the breeze bent around a corner. Jet-black hair fluttered about her face. Her green eyes held the moment to burn upon his.

Sirens loud. Panic gripped the block. He held the pistol in his mangled hand and fired into the backs of those blocking his passage.

He spun around and his bones crackled. But she was gone. He collapsed. He pulled forward with the might of his fingers and he ripped nails against the porous concrete. Desperate to move forward, the strength in his arms gave out. His head dropped forward. He spit broken teeth into the cracks of the sidewalk.

“My wife,” he gurgled as he lost consciousness… his clenched fist flung her from the bed to the floor. He could never tolerate her eyes on him. What would she see? What would she think? In spite of her affection, his confidence suffered. She was pregnant. He was enraged. The screams and the anger suffered no lull until the golden glow of morning found the apartment draped in silence and blood. He rolled to his back. His muscles undulated. His ribs twitched. There was a burn in his chest as his flesh tore slowly apart. Stretched thin. His heart pounded. He screamed. He contorted his jaw and strained the ligaments in his neck… Those days in college. He hid away in the books he never focused on. He kept to the back of lecture halls, and to the back booths of the all-night coffee shops the fashionable students frequented after the bars along the strip had shut down. If only he had a better body, a stronger chest, and muscular arms. If only he could wear the same clothes as the other guys. He wasn’t like the others physically. He wasn’t like the others academically. He didn’t belong. But there she was, a beautiful girl. Smiling. Anyway. His body seized. His chest ripped a gory hole from the inside out. A splash of blood and meat exploded to the pavement. His damp viscera fell down upon him as a heavy growth gurgled from the gaping wound. His eyes opened, torn back into the daylight. Slow as the dark trickle that drained from his gash and off his body and crawled towards the curb beside him… Stathis Edison. Awkward child. Horrified of humiliation. Stilted by it even as constant as it had been in his life. Stathis Edison. Nervous of crowds, of schools, of staying the same. In bed at night, he would trace the thought of loving someone beautiful and of being loved in return. But each morning all of his hope would die. Again. And again. He would brush his rotted teeth. He would run water through his wiry hair. He would often lose himself in his reflection. Such a deformed little boy. The lonely walk to school was never more horrible than on the days when his eyes found something disturbing on his face that he hadn’t previously noticed.

His weak hand titled the tip of the pistol to his head. Stathis Edison pulled the trigger. Stathis Edison died with the whisper of one word on his torn lips.

Written by Jeremy Rogers | © 2008